Striking a blow against fascism with commentary on current events, finance, economics, politics, music, art, culture and how to deal with our economic lives being bartered away by the elites who have our financial future all figured out: We'll be paying off their debts forever.

If you like what you read here, please make a donation to Pottersville2. Peace to all and let's work to end the wars.

"We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth." - Sydney Schanberg

"The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." - John Keats

"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen ... The world will present itself to you for its unmasking." - Franz Kafka

"“We of the craft are all crazy,” wrote Lord Byron about himself and his fellow poets. “Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”"

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

"In my lifetime we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. If this is evolution, I believe within twelve years we'll be voting for plants." - Lewis Black

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." – George Orwell

Senator Frank Church in 1975 chaired the Senate Hearings on the FBI’s Cointelpro operation, which spied upon and attempted to infiltrate, disrupt and discredit the peace movement. . . "if a dictator ever took over, (the NSA) could enable to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back. . . . That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. . . . I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

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Conservative Animus

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Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.

Current Readers

Politicus USA on GOP Fascism

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The entire GOP apparatus is slipping toward fascism and millions of Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that the Bible none of them have read takes precedence over the Constitution none of them have read.

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Waiting for Grand Dad

Cirze's World

Eco Farm Shitakes, Squash, Kale - Cindi, Nicole & Eddie

Ukraine Disinformation Battle: Little Green Men, Hamsters and the Fog of War

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There has always been a gap in how media on both sides of the former Iron Curtain have reported world events, and it’s growing as the crisis in Ukraine escalates. It has become increasingly difficult to obtain reliable information from any side — west, east, or further east — about what is going on in Eastern Ukraine.
While powerful propaganda machines fill the public space with smoke and mirrors, one of the few facts that can be positively established in Eastern Ukraine is that the body count is steadily growing: a testament of just how easy it is for self-interested foreign powers to start, either intentionally or recklessly, a civil war in the heart of Europe. Continuing coverage is available at this link and this link.

Cirze's World

Red Roots Farm - Kristen & Jason - No Sprays/Delicious Veggies!

Fukushima, Japan Disaster Worsens and Spreads

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While the American reactor industry continues to suck billions of dollars from the public treasury, its allies in the corporate media seem increasingly hesitant to cover the news of post-Fukushima Japan. Continuing coverage is available at this link, this link, and this link.

My Blog Fights Climate Change

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Animal Rescue - Click Everyday!

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Paul Krugman:

I don’t think many people grasp just how raw, how explicit, the corruption of our institutions has become.

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone who, like me, spent most of the Bush years as a voice in the wilderness. And he pointed out something remarkable: although those of us who said the obvious — that the Bush administration was fundamentally monstrous — were ridiculed by all the respectable people at the time, at this point our narrative has become everyone’s narrative.

Cirze's World

Paul Craig Roberts:

_________________ US Media
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"Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda."

"The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media.

Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives — not by journalists — whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers.

Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."

_________________ War On Terror
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Roberts asked "Is the War on Terror a Hoax", and claims it has "killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans of millions of Muslims in six countries". Roberts called the attacks "naked aggression" on civilian populations and infrastructure which constitute war crimes.

_________________ Republican Party
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Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution.

_________________ American Democracy and Oligarchy
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Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.

And that's what the Greeks are in the streets protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west.

Revolution is the only answer... We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?"

_________________ Farewell Speech
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"Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It,"

Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins:

"There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest."

It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization.

He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future.

He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off."

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Cirze's World

Liberal?

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal."

John F. Kennedy, 1960

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Citizen's United

"[T]his Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign is taking the reins of the Democratic National Committee, installing a new top official on Thursday to oversee the party’s day-to-day operations through the general election.

Brandon Davis, national political director for the Service Employees International Union, will become the general election chief of staff for the Democratic Party. His selection formalizes the coordination of the Clinton campaign and the committee, a stark contrast to Donald Trump who is currently at odds with his party.”

Hillary supporters think this is wonderful and natural. I see it differently. It is grotesquely premature. The election is not over. The primary is not finished. What the DNC and Clinton, together, have done is to take the collusion that has been going on for over a year, probably far longer, but at least that long, as this article informs us, Guccifer Leaked Emails Show DNC Colluded, and takes it out of the closet.

Out of the closet. The DNC has been aiding and colluding with the Clinton campaign, coordinating with the mainstream media. Any Bernie Sanders supporter has seen and opined the reality. It was not subtle. But this move is the worst kind of offensive audacity.

“This is in fact what happens,” Howard Dean, former Democratic Party chairman, told CNN. “Debbie will still have the title, but somebody else will be the effective operator of the DNC. It’s Hillary’s pick.”

No it’s not. This is an outrageous manifestation of the attitude and unethical, rule-breaking relationship between the DNC and the Clinton campaign that has been in existence all along. The primary election is not over, not until the convention, regardless of how strong a PR campaign the Clintons and their mainstream media surrogates have put on.

This shows how broken the Democratic party is, how broken the two party system is. More than ever we need Bernie’s revolution.

News From Underground is a daily e-news service run by Mark Crispin Miller, a Professor of Culture and Communication at NYU. It is based on his belief that academics, like reporters, have a civic obligation to help keep the people well-informed, so that American democracy might finally work.

I've read that we can be particularly proud as Hillary's one Democrat who appeals to almost everyone, including the Republicans who've been unafraid to attack the rest of the world militarily for the last 15 years - see, I'm not counting the Clinton year(!). She's even supporting the wives of these Republicans as members of her Cabinet and heads of departments.

This week on The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Election Crimes Bulletin we revisit the California primary crime scene and attempt to count the votes — something election officials in the state have failed to do. Officially, there are nearly 2 million votes that remain uncounted, and statistics show that the vast majority of these are favoring Bernie. If all votes were created equal and actually tallied, the Golden State would most likely be in Bernie’s pocked. Professional vote sleuth Greg Palast breaks down the numbers with Dennis J. Bernstein…

Hopefully, a breakup of the EU and NATO and, thereby, the avoidance of World War III.

The EU and NATO are evil institutions. These two institutions are mechanisms created by Washington in order to destroy the sovereignty of European peoples. These two institutions give Washington control over the Western world and serve both as cover and enabler of Washington’s aggression. Without the EU and NATO, Washington could not force Europe and the UK into conflict with Russia, and Washington could not have destroyed seven Muslim countries in 15 years without being isolated as a hated war criminal government, no member of whom could have travelled abroad without being arrested and put on trial.

Clearly, the presstitute media lied about the polls in order to discourage the leave vote. But it did not work. The British people have always been the font of liberty. It was the the historic achievements of the British that transformed law into a shield of the people from a weapon in the hands of the state and gave accountable government to the world. The British, or a majority of them, understood that the EU is a dictatorial governing mechanism in which power is in the hands of unaccountable people and in which law can easily be used as a weapon in the hands of unaccountable government.

Washington, in an effort to save its power over Europe, launched a campaign, willingly joined by presstitutes and the brainwashed left-wing, who flocked to the One Percent’s banner, that presented the effort to preserve British liberty and sovereignty as racism. This dishonest campaign shows beyond all doubt that Washington and its media whores have no regard whatsoever for liberty and the sovereignty of peoples. Washington regards every assertion of democratic rule as a barrier to its hegemony and demonizes every democratic impulse. Reformist leaders in Latin America are constantly overthrown by Washington, and Washington asserts that only Washington and its terrorist allies have the right to choose the government of Syria, just as Washington chose the government of Ukraine.

The British people, or a majority of them, gave Washington the bird. But the fight is not over. Perhaps it hasn’t really yet begun. Here is what the British can likely expect: The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and George Soros will conspire to attack the British pound, driving it down and terrorizing the British economy. We will see who is the strongest: the will of the British people or the will of the CIA, the One Percent, and the EU and neocon nazis.

The coming attack on the British economy is the reason that leave supporters such as Boris Johnson are mistaken in their belief that there is “no need for haste” in exiting the EU. The longer it takes for the British to escape from the authoritarian EU, the longer Washington and the EU can inflict punishment on the British people for voting to leave and the more time the presstitutes will have to convince the British people that their vote was a mistake. As the vote is nonbinding, a cowardly and cowed Parliament could reject the vote.

Cameron should step down immediately, not months from now in October. The new British government should tell the EU that the British people’s decision is implemented now, not in two years and that all political and legal relationships terminated as of the vote. Otherwise, in two years the British will be so beat down by punishments and propaganda that their vote will be overturned.

The British government should immediately announce the termination of its participation in Washington’s sanctions on Russia and hook its economy to the rising nations of Russia, China, India, and Iran. With this support, the British can survive the Washington led attack on their economy.

The Brexit vote shows that a majority of the British voters understand that the UK government represents interests other than the interests of the British people. As difficult as the British know it is to hold their own government to account, they understand they have no prospect whatsoever of holding the EU government to account. During their time under the EU, the British have been reminded of historical times when law was the word of the sovereign.

The propagandists who comprise the Western political and media establishments succeeded in keeping the real issues out of public discussion and presenting the leave vote as racism. However, enough of the British people resisted the brainwashing and controlled debate to grasp the real issues: sovereignty, accountable government, financial independence, freedom from involvement in Washington’s wars and conflict with Russia.

The British people should not be so naive as to think that their vote settles the matter. The fight has only begun. Expect:

— The British government to come back to the people and say, look, the EU has given us a better deal. We can now afford to stay in.— The Fed, ECB, BOJ, and NY hedge funds to pound the pound and to short British stocks in order to convince the British voters that their vote is sinking the economy.— More emphasis on the vote’s weakening of Europe, leaving all to the mercy of “Russian aggression.”— Hard to resist bribes (and threats) to prominent members of the leave majority and pressure on such leave leaders as Boris Johnson to be reasonable, concillatory and to maintain good relations with Washington and Europe, and to reach a compromise on remaining in the EU.— Expect the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to attribute the loss of British jobs and investment opportunities to the leave vote.

Once you learn to think about how things really are and not as the presstitutes present them,
you will be able to add to the list all by yourself.

Remember, the Irish voted against the EU and pressure was kept on them until they reversed their vote. This is the likely fate of the British.

Information continues to come in about the Brexit vote. A member of the British Army said that 90% of the lads in his unit voted to leave. They voted exit because they do not believe they should be involved in Washingtons wars. He said that his unit agreed that the wars are dictated by Washington, via Brussels, and not by the British people. He also said that that the soldiers were “taking their own pen” to the ballot box, because “they only use pencils at the polls and they could be rubbed out and changed.”

And as Stephen Lendman reports, the propaganda is already in high gear with David Cameron setting the tone by emphasizing how happy the vote has surely made Putin and ISIS (somehow these two deadly enemies are happy over the same thing!). The self-hating Russian, Garry Kasparov, said Brexit was “the perfect gift for Vladimir Putin,” as Britain’s exit leaves the EU a “weakened institution with less power to confront Putin’s assaults on Europe’s borders.” What assaults, Garry?

Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul is “shocked, shocked!” The US and EU lost, Putin wins.
Of course, the vote had nothing to do with Putin or Russia. But the liars are going to try to make the British feel that they betrayed England and gave Russia power over Europe. Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied to the nonsense: We are accustomed to “the Russian factor” as the explanation of all events in the universe.

The British people might think that they are out of the EU, but they are not. They have a long hard fight ahead. Washington and the British political and media establishments that serve Washington are not going to let them leave.

Watching England vote to leave the European Union is a strange experience. It is one of those events which leave you dazed and confused but which may, a few years from now, prove to have huge implications of the future of Europe and the world in general.

Brexit will have a significant impact on the lives of many British people who have chosen to make their homes on Continental Europe. If those who have decided to work or retire in other countries, like Spain or Germany, don't want to go back to Britain they will have to seek naturalization in their chosen nations. This may or not be a possibility, only time will tell.

But beyond the significant ways in which individual lives will obviously be impacted, the exit of Britain will also have bigger, more ominous, effects. This morning the Scots are already talking about another independence referendum because they voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU. There are also huge implications for Northern Ireland. The peace in NI was maintained in part because the EU allowed for an open boarder between it and the Republic of Ireland. The reintroduction of a hard border could easily reignite tensions and fighting in Northern Ireland, particularly given that they were another region that voted to remain in the EU.

Another important issue to consider is that Brexit could spell the doom of the EU in general. The victory of those who have pushed for Britain to leave the EU will galvanize those in other countries who want to leave the Union. The EU is, at the moment, even less popular in France than it is in England, a rather ominous fact. The failure of the EU could have terrible implications for the peace and stability of Europe in general.

But one of the things that the vote yesterday reminded me of was the generational political split that we see happening in many places, North America included. The young people in Britain voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU. Young people everywhere seem to understand and embrace the need for greater cooperation, more regulation to control markets, and more open human and cultural integration. I have personally seen this generational split in people around me and it is noticeable and pronounced. In the US we have seen the amazing way that Bernie Sanders has brought young people into the political process, and this is good news for the future. But generational change can be a messy and disorienting business, and I can't help but think that the future of England and Europe in general looks rocky as an older generation, still steeped in an age of racism and Neo-Liberalism, seeks to hold on to its myths and power while a new generation comes up to redefine politics.

The split in American politics is as pronounced as that demonstrated by the Brexit vote. Old white folks have demonstrated a shocking degree of support for messages of division, racial hatred, and misogynistic rhetoric. Politicians like Trump use those simmering feelings to bolster a rightwing populism that talks about a return to the "good old days." But younger, more culturally dynamic people know that much of the "good old days" were terrible and they are looking for a way forward that embraces some of the post war drive for greater equality and cooperation without the racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and gender inequality.

The Brexit marks a moment in the battle for a new way forward. The battle was lost, but the fight will not go away because the ideas of those who voted to leave the EU are inexorably being replaced. The battle is slow but it's not going away.

Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party's rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America's victims in faraway places.

"We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don't you forget it." So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, "Which side did you fight on?"

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called "The Price of Freedom" at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa's grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved "a million lives"; Iraq was "liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision". The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington's boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal - Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it "never happened ...Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. It didn't matter... ". Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called "a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is "cool". One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers - truth-tellers - than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.

In 2009, Obama promised to help "rid the world of nuclear weapons" and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No American president has built more nuclear warheads than Obama. He is "modernising" America's doomsday arsenal, including a new "mini" nuclear weapon, whose size and "smart" technology, says a leading general, ensure its use is "no longer unthinkable".

James Bradley, the best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and son of one of the US marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, said, "[One] great myth we're seeing play out is that of Obama as some kind of peaceful guy who's trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. He's the biggest nuclear warrior there is. He's committed us to a ruinous course of spending a trillion dollars on more nuclear weapons. Somehow, people live in this fantasy that because he gives vague news conferences and speeches and feel-good photo-ops that somehow that's attached to actual policy. It isn't."

On Obama's watch, a second cold war is under way. The Russian president is a pantomime villain; the Chinese are not yet back to their sinister pig-tailed caricature - when all Chinese were banned from the United States - but the media warriors are working on it.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders has mentioned any of this. There is no risk and no danger for the United States and all of us; for them, the greatest military build-up on the borders of Russia since World War Two has not happened. On May 11, Romania went "live" with a Nato "missile defence" base that aims its first-strike American missiles at the heart of Russia, the world's second nuclear power.

In Asia, the Pentagon is sending ships, planes and special forces to the Philippines to threaten China. The US already encircles China with hundreds of military bases that curve in an arc up from Australia, to Asia and across to Afghanistan. Obama calls this a "pivot".

As a direct consequence, China reportedly has changed its nuclear weapons policy from no-first-use to high alert and put to sea submarines with nuclear weapons. The escalator is quickening.

It was Hillary Clinton who, as Secretary of State in 2010, elevated the competing territorial claims for rocks and reef in the South China Sea to an international issue; CNN and BBC hysteria followed; China was building airstrips on the disputed islands. In a mammoth war game in 2015, Operation Talisman Sabre, the US and Australia practiced "choking" the Straits of Malacca through which pass most of China's oil and trade. This was not news.

Clinton declared that America had a "national interest" in these Asian waters. The Philippines and Vietnam were encouraged and bribed to pursue their claims and old enmities against China. In America, people are being primed to see any Chinese defensive position as offensive, and so the ground is laid for rapid escalation. A similar strategy of provocation and propaganda is applied to Russia.

Clinton, the "women's candidate", leaves a trail of bloody coups: in Honduras, in Libya (plus the murder of the Libyan president) and Ukraine. The latter is now a CIA theme park swarming with Nazis and the frontline of a beckoning war with Russia. It was through Ukraine - literally, borderland - that Hitler's Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, which lost 27 million people. This epic catastrophe remains a presence in Russia. Clinton's presidential campaign has received money from all but one of the world's ten biggest arms companies. No other candidate comes close.

Sanders, the hope of many young Americans, is not very different from Clinton in his proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He backed Bill Clinton's illegal bombing of Serbia. He supports Obama's terrorism by drone, the provocation of Russia and the return of special forces (death squads) to Iraq. He has nothing to say on the drumbeat of threats to China and the accelerating risk of nuclear war. He agrees that Edward Snowden should stand trial and he calls Hugo Chavez - like him, a social democrat - "a dead communist dictator". He promises to support Clinton if she is nominated.

The election of Trump or Clinton is the old illusion of choice that is no choice: two sides of the same coin. In scapegoating minorities and promising to "make America great again", Trump is a far right-wing domestic populist; yet the danger of Clinton may be more lethal for the world.

"Only Donald Trump has said anything meaningful and critical of US foreign policy," wrote Stephen Cohen, emeritus professor of Russian History at Princeton and NYU, one of the few Russia experts in the United States to speak out about the risk of war.

In a radio broadcast, Cohen referred to critical questions Trump alone had raised. Among them: why is the United States "everywhere on the globe"? What is NATO's true mission? Why does the US always pursue regime change in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine? Why does Washington treat Russia and Vladimir Putin as an enemy?

The hysteria in the liberal media over Trump serves an illusion of "free and open debate" and "democracy at work". His views on immigrants and Muslims are grotesque, yet the deporter-in-chief of vulnerable people from America is not Trump but Obama, whose betrayal of people of colour is his legacy: such as the warehousing of a mostly black prison population, now more numerous than Stalin's gulag.

This presidential campaign may not be about populism but American liberalism, an ideology that sees itself as modern and therefore superior and the one true way. Those on its right wing bear a likeness to 19th century Christian imperialists, with a God-given duty to convert or co-opt or conquer.

In Britain, this is Blairism. The Christian war criminal Tony Blair got away with his secret preparation for the invasion of Iraq largely because the liberal political class and media fell for his "cool Britannia". In the Guardian, the applause was deafening; he was called "mystical". A distraction known as identity politics, imported from the United States, rested easily in his care.

History was declared over, class was abolished and gender promoted as feminism; lots of women became New Labour MPs. They voted on the first day of Parliament to cut the benefits of single parents, mostly women, as instructed. A majority voted for an invasion that produced 700,000 Iraqi widows.

The equivalent in the US are the politically correct warmongers on the New York Times, the Washington Post and network TV who dominate political debate. I watched a furious debate on CNN about Trump's infidelities. It was clear, they said, a man like that could not be trusted in the White House. No issues were raised. Nothing on the 80 per cent of Americans whose income has collapsed to 1970s levels. Nothing on the drift to war. The received wisdom seems to be "hold your nose" and vote for Clinton: anyone but Trump. That way, you stop the monster and preserve a system gagging for another war.

Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger

John Pilger, the insider who came outside to wage the good fight against the CIA economic wars.

For days or weeks on end, a single place - call it Newtown, San Bernardino, or Orlando (one school, one gathering of government workers, one club) - is the center of our universe. The rest of the world? Not so much. However significant the 24/7 event may be, it blots out just about everything else and so plays havoc with our sense of what’s important and what isn’t. It also ensures that, at least in the mainstream, ever fewer reporters cover ever fewer non-24/7 stories.

For so much that's basic to our world and will matter far more in the long run than local slaughters, no matter how horrific, there are few or no reporters and next to no coverage. This means, for instance, that in the distant reaches of the imperium, much of the time the U.S. military can operate remarkably freely, without fear of significant scrutiny. Which is why, on the subject of the U.S. military’s “pivot” to Africa, it’s lucky that Nick Turse has been on the beat (almost alone) for "TomDispatch." Otherwise in our new media universe, what we don’t know could, in the end, hurt us. Tom

Benjamin Balthaser, Truthout: Purdue President Mitch Daniels recently received national praise for his "Back a Boiler" initiative, ostensibly meant to address the skyrocketing student debt load. Proposed by Milton Friedman in the 1970s, "Back a Boiler" is less like a student loan and more like an investment in a stock portfolio. It defies the principle that higher education is a social good, not something to be engaged in solely for private gain.

Purdue President Daniels is no stranger to slashing budgets or increasing tuition. During his term as governor of Indiana, he slashed $150 million from higher education. Tuition at Purdue increased nearly 100 percent due to those cuts, inflating the student debt burden to an all-time high of more than $26,000. As Dr. Harry Powell, faculty liaison to the governing board of the University of California system, summarized one legislature's views: "The student is your ATM. They're how you should balance the budget."

Daniels' previous mission as governor of Indiana included waging war on teachers' unions, denying them collective bargaining rights, pushing non-union charter schools and even banning books -- demanding in 2010 that Howard Zinn not be taught in any public school or university school of education.

. . . I would suggest that Daniels' new plan has little to do with lowering student debt burdens, just as attacking teachers' unions has little to do with accountability. It is about turning a public resource into a private source of investment. To Daniels, not all human stock portfolios are created equal. If you are engineering student, according to his plan, then your interest rate is 4.23 percent. Major in something deemed more risky, such as English, and a student would look at a whopping 10 percent interest rate. Should an English major make a yearly income equivalent to an engineering major, the additional charge could come out to an extra $4,000 per (year).

. . . these human capital contracts are part of a larger trend to use the soaring price of higher education to further political goals. In North Carolina, tuition reductions are being deployed as a means to dramatically cut funds for historically Black colleges.

President Obama's higher education plan, announced last year in his State of the Union address, also used the crisis of student debt and rising tuition to introduce a "rating system" that would rank college graduates' salaries as a means to award or withhold public university funds. Like Daniels' plan, President Obama's rating system would emphasize the role of college as a financial investment, rewarding students who were able to maximize profits from their increased human capital.

It's no accident that public higher education, like health care, has become the site of struggle within the Democratic Party. It has become symbolic for a wider struggle over a vision of the United States -- one in which we are private consumers, maximizing our rational self-interest in a competitive market place, or part of a larger social fabric built on solidarity and principles of broad, inclusive democracy.

Which in the end, is likely why Daniels wants to do the public university in for good -- at least a university that does anything other than train people, in George Carlin's words, to be just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, but just dumb enough to passively accept the status quo. In other words, be a good return on someone's investment.

Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future: Leaders should care deeply about the will of the public, not scheme to subvert it. This push to hold a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the election is an insult to democracy. It is an insult to our economy. It is an insult to voters.

Nick Turse, TomDispatch: At a time when the number of US troops, bases, and - perhaps - missions in Africa are increasing, along with the number of terrorist groups and terror attacks on the continent, hundreds of already murky missions have apparently been purged from the command's rolls.

President Barack Obama’s recent trips to Europe and Asia were more than farewell tours with photo ops. While the media focused on an admittedly cute picture of the president shaking hands with Prince George, and dutifully reported his official remarks in Vietnam and Hiroshima, Obama was busy pushing some of the policies he sees as integral to his “legacy.”

These include a military buildup against a newly assertive China and beating the drums for two international trade deals that are increasingly opposed in the United States, Europe and Asia as being too corporate-friendly.

To understand what is driving the opposition to both the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), "WhoWhatWhy" spoke to experts on the countries Obama visited.

“Few tariffs actually remain between the UK and US, so it is not a surprise that Obama’s push is actually an effort to sustain the European project,” Gulotty told "WhoWhatWhy." “A US goal in TTIP is greater access to European markets which have political barriers against, for example, American meats.”

Obama’s support for TTIP and for a Europe that remains unified comes at a shaky time for the EU. Recently, several member countries elected leaders that oppose EU-mandated austerity measures enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. Governments in Greece and Spain have faced off with the richer EU countries and other lenders, resulting in near expulsion from the bloc for Greece.

And I shouldn't go here now as this piece is long enough already, but I have never been very good about holding my heart-felt desires unactionated. Remember the good ole days of taking advantage and making huuuge bucks off of those newly independent USSR satellite countries? They're baaaack. Anew.

. . . I recalled a recent news item about Slovakia. Just two months prior to the President’s visit, Slovakia initiated a plan to divert nine per cent of workers’ wages into private investment accounts laden with corporate stocks and bonds as an alternative to a government run social security program.

This was similar to a plan that President Bush had peddled under the banner of the “ownership society.” Fortunately, this was one of the rare occasions when the President was rebuked by Congress.

Today in the U.S., with both corporate bonds and stocks suffering massive losses and over $2 trillion of taxpayers’ dollars doled out by the Federal Reserve to shore up Wall Street firms in various stages of insolvency, we finally grasp the true meaning of “the ownership society:” the Wall Street execs absconded with the so-called profits; the little people own the losses; the next generation owns the bailout debt. This scheme makes Ponzi artist Bernie Madoff look like a piker.

The Slovakia plan was modeled after the program set up in Chile in 1980 and 28 other countries thereafter. According to actuarial studies of the plans in Chile and Mexico, it was an asset stripping operation that allowed Wall Street firms like Citigroup to strip away as much as 20 to 25 per cent of the workers’ wages in fees to “manage” the money.

The Chilean plan was the brainchild of Jose Pinera, who served as Labor Minister under the brutal military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Pinera later emerged as the global pied piper of private accounts to replace government run social security systems and peddled his pension reform mantra around the globe.

. . . According to Pinera’s web site, www.pensionreform.org (which is registered not to him but to the Cato Institute, a free market think tank), Pinera sat down in the Austin home of George W. Bush, then Governor of Texas, and mapped out his vision.

I had a chance to personally observe this worker-capitalist dynamic in action in August 1994. I was working for the Wall Street brokerage firm, Smith Barney (which had been taken over by the large insurance company, Traveler’s) and was called to an employee meeting by the branch manager and a visiting V.P. from the corporate headquarters. Employees were shown a new benefits plan that deferred anything we might hypothetically get in deferred compensation invested in company stock into the distant future while dramatically increasing our expenses in the present.

While the room was fuming, one of my colleagues spoke up. He said since we’re getting deferred stock over time in the publicly-traded parent company (Traveler’s), and reducing company expenses will boost profits and push the stock price higher, isn’t this something we should support. The room immediately calmed. They had sipped the Kool Aid of shareholder capitalism. (Traveler’s would eventually merge with Citicorp to become Citigroup and in 2008 require a backstop of hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars to prevent the company from collapsing.)

The uproar at "The Post" was over a weekend confab that saw the Federal Reserve guarantee upwards of $300 billion of taxpayer money to bail out Citigroup for the second time in a month and a half. Of that amount, $20 billion was for a paltry equity stake for taxpayers when the whole company could have been bought for $20.5 billion at the prior Friday’s closing price, and that was $4.5 billion less than taxpayers had dumped into the company in October. (It’s not a good omen that the man who helped put this deal together, Tim Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to be the new U.S. Treasury Secretary; neither is it promising that Robert Rubin was standing at the elbow of the President-elect in his first press conference, signaling he’s a key advisor.)

. . . More than $31 trillion was lost globally in stocks from January 1 to December 2, 2008 while much of this country is stumbling around dazed, afraid to open their 401(k) and IRA statements, repeating the imposed mantra “I’m in it for the long haul.”

. . . We’ve arrived at the finish line in the race to the bottom and it’s clear there are few winners: once the little fish were eaten, the big fish fed on each other (Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and assorted hedge fund frauds against the wealthy). Now the big fish have nowhere else to feed but at the government’s bailout trough, transferring the debt-ownership society to our children.

Our own money is also being used against us in electing our President and members of Congress. After subsidizing our corporate health care plan to boost corporate profits or paying for it outright and funding our contribution to our 401(k) plan, which provides a steady stream of cheap capital to boost corporate profits, we have little left to donate to political campaigns. That makes it possible for Wall Street to fund the candidates of both major parties.

Don't ya think it's about time for Lyin Ryan, the poorly-educated "Finance Wiz Kid," to whip the privatization-of-Social-Security-in-order-to-secure-its-future-monetarization scam out again?

He doesn't have that many tricks left to pull out of his moldy old bag now (did you see his trying-to-maintain-order clown show as Speaker today?), and some new grift scheme has got to be found to refill the owners' funds after the coming market downturn takes full effect.

On another sad tangent, I've heard that some po' folks are starting to miss the "W" days.

So many fans still wish they could go to his favorite bar and have a beer with that AA sweetheart (and talk over fond old times?).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

So, on to current day misapprehensions.

Of course it wasn't about Islam. Not even by half. No matter what those NSA/Homeland/terrorist-fighting funders are touting.

The young man went to a sex club. Haven't you read anything about Islam yet?

This event was fairly obviously the story of a gay person who had some type of issue (herpes, AIDS?) against someone or many ones at this sex club.

He definitely wasn't going to admit to such, thus the lame ISIS rant (from a self-proclaimed Hezbollah follower) right before he was cut down in a hail of bullets.

Or perhaps it was a G4S/Securicor/Wackenhut maneuver where he wasn't supposed to be killed after he declared it an ISIS affair, shot up the club, and got the country moving to fight all those enemies overseas (and domestic!) again.

And the sex club setting was just for window dressing/PR? It worked exceptionally well as it did get the country mobilized.

Though it seems to fit the political agendas of both Republicans and Democrats, the assertion that the shooter responsible for the Orlando massacre was motivated by the Islamic State (ISIS) is certainly wrong. This conclusion is supported by the recent testimony of CIA Chief John Brennan before the Senate intelligence committee. He said that the CIA has found no connection between Omar Mateen, the man who gunned down over one hundred people at a gay nightclub in Orlando Florida on 13 June 2016, and any terrorist group. Thus, it makes more sense that this was a hate crime against gay people facilitated by gun laws that are demonstrably not in the interest of the citizens of the United States.

If this is so, why would Mateen claim on a 911 call, and later on a call to a television station, that he was slaughtering all these people in the name of ISIS? Can we take him literally on this? I don’t think so. Just ask yourself, Why would an alleged ISIS-inspired radical “Islamist” shoot up a gay nightclub full of Puerto Ricans?

Mateen was "very sweet" and liked to be "cuddled," the man told Univision. But he was upset about the way gay men responded to him.

Omar Mateen, the Muslim gunman who committed the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, was "100 percent" gay and bore a grudge against Latino men because he felt used by them, according to a man who says he was his lover for two months.

“I’ve cried like you have no idea. But the thing that makes me want to tell the truth is that he didn’t do it for terrorism. In my opinion he did it for revenge,” he told Univision Noticias anchor Maria Elena Salinas in an exclusive interview in English and Spanish on Tuesday.

He said Mateen was angry and upset after a man he had sex with later revealed he was infected with the HIV virus.

Asked why he decided to come forward with his story, he said: “It’s my responsibility as a citizen of the United States and a gay man.”

The man said he had approached the FBI and been interviewed three times in person by agents.

Univision was unable to independently verify his account. The FBI confirmed to Univision that it had met with him.

The man, who did not want his true identity revealed, agreed to an interview wearing a disguise and calling himself Miguel. Speaking in fluent Spanish and accented English, he said he met Mateen last year through a gay dating site and began a relationship soon after. He and Mateen were "friends with benefits," he said.

He described Mateen as “a very sweet guy" who never showed a violent side. He loved to be cuddled. "He was looking for love," he said.

When Miguel heard about the massacre on the news he said he was stunned. “My reaction was that can’t be the man I know. It’s impossible that the man I know could do that,” he said.

Mateen opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle during a Latin-themed night at Pulse in the early hours of June 12, killing 49 people and wounding dozens more. He was killed in a shootout with police hours later. Most of the dead were Hispanic.

Investigators are still looking into the motives for his rampage.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch told reporters on Tuesday that investigators may never be able to pinpoint a single motive and have not ruled out witness reports suggesting Mateen might have had gay interests. "While we know a lot more about him in terms of who he was and what he did, I do not want to definitively rule out any particular motivation here," she said.

In a 911 call from the club, Mateen pledged solidarity with the Islamic State group, and officials say he had explored websites of armed Islamic extremists.

Miguel recalled on one occasion Mateen expressed his criticism of the U.S. war on terrorism and the killing of innocent women and children. "'I told him, you're totally right,'" said Miguel.

Mateen never revealed his name to him, saying only that he was 35 years old and married with a son, Miguel told Univision. He said they met 15-20 times, the last occasion in late December. He said he believed Mateen's second wife knew he frequented gay bars and that his marriage was a smoke screen to hide that he was "100 percent" gay.

“He adored Latinos, gay Latinos, with brown skin – but he felt rejected. He felt used by them – there were moments in the Pulse nightclub that made him feel really bad. Guys used him. That really affected him,” Miguel said. "I believe this crazy horrible thing he did – that was revenge."

Mateen, who liked to drink, expressed frustration over his father's extreme views on homosexuality, which included a belief that "gay people [are] the devil and gay people have to die," Miguel said.

Mateen was especially upset after a sexual encounter with two Puerto Rican men, one of whom later revealed he was HIV positive, he added.

"He [Omar] was terrified that he was infected," he said. "I asked him, 'Did you do a test?' Yes. He went to the pharmacy and did the test … it came out negative but it doesn't come out right away. It takes 4, 5 months."

"When I asked him what he was going to do now, his answer was 'I'm going to make them pay for what they did to me.'"

Pay no attention to the man who bought the "Washington Post" for his personal handrag when he speaks in heavy seriousity about the actions of truly honorable public servants.

An article in the "Washington Post" yesterday continued the paper’s unrelenting efforts to marginalize Senator Bernie Sanders and his effort to press forward on his call for a political revolution in America. The "Post" article brandished its most preposterous cudgel yet: the cost of Senator Sanders’ continuing protection by the Secret Service, which it suggested was a drain on taxpayers. Calling Sanders the “now-vanquished Democratic presidential candidate,” the "Post"’s John Wagoner laments that even though “Hillary Clinton has clinched the party’s nomination,” Sanders is still receiving Secret Service protection which could be costing taxpayers more than $38,000 a day.

In fact, Clinton hasn’t clinched anything until there is an official vote taken at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 25-28, no matter how much corporate media might wish otherwise. And since there has never been a Presidential candidate like Clinton, who is under an active criminal FBI investigation for violating State Department policy and transmitting classified material over a private server in her home, anything is possible before the July convention — or thereafter.

. . . If this was an isolated smack down of Sanders at the "Washington Post," it wouldn’t trigger speculation about an underlying agenda. But it comes on the heels of an endless series of efforts to marginalize Bernie Sanders at the newspaper.

On March 8, the media watchdog, FAIR, reported that in “what has to be some kind of record,” the "Washington Post" had published “16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours,” a period which included the “crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan.”

The FAIR report noted that billionaire Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, the online retailer, had purchased the "Washington Post" in 2013. It called attention to reasons Bezos might wish to send another establishment candidate to the White House:

“… Bezos has enjoyed friendly ties with both the Obama administration and the CIA. As Michael Oman-Reagan notes, Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it. Amazon also has over $600 million in contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization Sanders said he wanted to abolish in 1974, and still says he “had a lot of problems with.”

John Spaid of TheStreet.com says Amazon (like the government’s own books) is known “for its fairly opaque accounting practices.” Spaid also says the success of Amazon’s stock “has been based on slim or nonexistent profits” and punctuates his overall analysis with this: “Amazon’s unusual and obtuse financial presentations should be a very bright red flag to all investors….”

In January of this year, the Editorial Board of the "Washington Post" launched an assault on the accuracy of Senator Bernie Sander’s talking points, calling them “his own brand of fiction.” The editorial specifically called out Sanders for creating the “tale” that Wall Street is playing a pivotal role in why “working Americans are not thriving.” It says Sanders needs a “reality check” because “Wall Street has already undergone a round of reform, significantly reducing the risks big banks pose to the financial system.”

It’s actually the "Washington Post"’s editorial board that needs a reality check. It’s among a tiny minority that thinks Wall Street risks have been adequately constrained. A poll conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner Research in mid 2014 found that nearly 90 percent of voters believe the Federal government has failed to rein in Wall Street. The poll was conducted among voters across the political spectrum. The poll also found that 64 percent of all voters and 62 percent of voters that own stock believe that “the stock market is rigged for insiders and people who know how to manipulate the system.”

Just this past April, the Wall Street Journal reported that exit polls following the New York primary found that 63 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republican voters “said Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps.” And that’s in a state that Wall Street calls home.

It should also be noted that Bezos has multiple reasons to want to kick to the curb any candidate that poses a threat to his financial enablers on Wall Street. Wall Street banks have underwritten over $8 billion of Amazon debt offerings. The same banking behemoths have analysts on their payroll that can make or break a company with a buy or sell stock rating. For example, Morgan Stanley has been an underwriter of Amazon debt dating back to at least 1999. Last November, Morgan Stanley’s research analysts suggested that Amazon’s stock price could reach $800 (the stock opened at $663.25 that day). Morgan Stanley reaffirmed its “overweight” rating on the stock. Morgan Stanley, which took over the retail brokerage firm Smith Barney, has over 15,000 retail brokers that can, and frequently do, push the stocks that the firm is recommending.

. . . Rigged Wall Street research was a key component leading to the dot.com bubble bust in 2000 that erased about $4 trillion from investors’ brokerage statements. In 2001, Fortune Magazine published a highly critical analysis of Morgan Stanley research analyst, Mary Meeker, and her deeply conflicted role . . . .

In one year alone, 1999, Morgan Stanley paid Meeker $15 million. But after all the hand-wringing back then about corrupted analysts on Wall Street, the same practices continue today. President Obama’s Dodd-Frank reform legislation left Wall Street banks able to underwrite stocks and bonds for their corporate clients while their analysts put buy ratings on the company’s stock. One can also be assured that Hillary Clinton, who has promised to follow in the footsteps of Obama, won’t be touching this sacred cash cow on Wall Street either.

Amazon stock is also traded in dark pools (unregulated quasi stock exchanges) run by major Wall Street banks which have participated in underwriting debt deals for Amazon. This practice is allowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC is headed by Mary Jo White, who came to the SEC from one of Wall Street’s major go-to law firms, Debevoise and Plimpton. Between White and her husband, John White, who works for law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, every major Wall Street bank has been a client of one or the other’s firms. Under Federal regulations, the conflicts of the spouse become the conflicts of the Federal agency head. None of this stopped President Obama, who enjoyed heavy campaign funding from Wall Street law firms, from nominating Mary Jo White to lead the Wall Street watchdog.

The "Washington Post"’s January editorial stated that “Mr. Sanders’s success so far does not show that the country is ready for a political revolution.” In fact, his success shows exactly that. As Senator Sanders told his supporters in a live-streamed video (see below) last Thursday evening:

“During this campaign, we won more than 12 million votes. We won 22 state primaries and caucuses. We came very close – within 2 points or less – in five more states. In other words, our vision for the future of this country is not some kind of fringe idea. It is not a radical idea. It is mainstream. It is what millions of Americans believe in and want to see happen…

“In virtually every state that we contested we won the overwhelming majority of the votes of people 45 years of age or younger, sometimes, may I say, by huge numbers. These are the people who are determined to shape the future of this country. These are the people who are the future of this country.”

Sanders’ rallies around the country frequently had in excess of 5,000 people in attendance and at times, over 20,000. Hillary Clinton’s rallies were mostly attended by hundreds – not thousands — of supporters.

This election will decide not only the future of the Democratic Party but the future of democracy in America. Billionaires have every reason to fear Bernie Sanders; regular Americans have every reason to listen carefully to his message as presented directly by him and not through the self-serving lens of billionaire-owned media outlets.

------------------------------

Need some insight on today's vote in the UK on whether to stay or go from the EU?

If you read the presstitute media, Brexit — the referendum tomorrow on the UK’s exit from the EU — is about racism. According to the story line, angry rightwing racists of violent inclinations want to leave the EU to avoid having to accept more dark-skinned immigrants into England.

Despite the constant propaganda against exit, polls indicated that more favored leaving the EU than remaining until a female member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was killed by a man that a witness said shouted “Brexit.” Cox was an opponent of leaving the EU.

The UK government and presstitute media used Cox’s murder to drive home the propaganda that violent racists were behind Brexit. However, other witnesses gave a different report. The Guardian, which led with the propaganda line, did report later in its account that “Other witnesses said the attack was launched after the MP became involved in an altercation involving two men near where she held her weekly surgery.” Of course, we will never know, because Cox’s murder is too valuable of a weapon against Brexit.

There is no doubt that many in the UK are disturbed at the transformation of their country. One doesn’t have to be a racist to feel that one’s country is being stolen from them by people of alien cultures. The British have a long history of fighting off invaders, and many believe they are experiencing an invasion, although not an armed one. An armed one, of course, would not have the government’s and media’s support.

When British people hear pundits pronounce that immigrants contribute more to the UK than they absorb in social payments, what they hear is inconsistent with their experience. Moreover, many British are tired of having to avoid entire sections of their cities, including London, because of safety concerns.

It is a propaganda choice to call these concerns racism rather than cultural defense, and the UK political establishment has made that propaganda choice. Little wonder so many British citizens no longer believe that the British Establishment represents Britain.

But let’s give the propagandists the benefit of the doubt and for sake of argument assume that Brexit is about racism. What is the opposition to Brexit really about? Most certainly it is not about helping the refugees from Washington’s wars that the UK government has enabled. If the British establishment cared so much for the Muslims seeking refuge from America’s invasions, bombs, and drones, the British establishment would not have supported Washington’s attacks on these people.

Opposition to Brexit is based on two powerful interests of Washington.

One is the interests of the New York banks and Wall Street to eliminate the UK as a financial center competitor. This blatant fact has escaped the notice of the City and the Bank of England.

The British have forgotten that they only have one foot in the EU, because the UK was permitted to keep its own currency. The UK does not use the euro and, thus, retains the power to finance the British government. Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, etc., do not have this capability. They are dependent on private banks for financing.

In order to trick the UK into joining the EU, the British were given special privileges. However, these privileges cannot last forever. The EU process is one of political integration. As I reported years ago, Jean-Claude Trichet, at that time the president of the European Central Bank, said that to complete the political integration of Europe, the fiscal policies of member states would be centralized. It is impossible to centralize fiscal policies if the UK is an independent financial center with its own central bank and currency.

Wall Street understands that the defeat of Brexit means a shortened lifespan for London as a financial center, as it is impossible to be a financial center unless a country has its own currency and central bank. As it is impossible for the UK to be a member of the EU and not operate under the European Central Bank, once the Brexit referendum is defeated, the process of gradually forcing the UK into the euro will begin.

The other powerful interest is the interest of Washington to prevent one country’s exit from
leading to the exit of other countries. As CIA documents found in the US National Archives make clear, the EU was a CIA initiative, the purpose of which is to make it easy for Washington to exercise political control over Europe. It is much easier for Washington to control the EU than 28 separate countries.

Moreover, if the EU unravels, so likely would NATO, which is the necessary cover for Washington’s aggression.

The EU serves Washington and the One Percent. It serves no one else. The EU is a murderer of sovereignty and peoples. The intent is for the British, French, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Spanish, and all the rest to disappear as peoples. Brexit is the last chance to defeat this hidden agenda, and apparently the British will vote tomorrow without having a clue as to what is at stake and what the vote is about.

The Imperial City deserves to be sacked by insurgent politicians of the very ignorant kind. That is, outsiders unschooled in its specious groupthink and destructive delusions of grandeur.

That’s why Donald Trump’s challenge to the beltway’s permanent bipartisan ruling class is so welcome. He is largely ignorant of the neocon and war hawk catechisms and sophistries propounded by joints like the Council on Foreign Relations.

But owing to his overweening self-confidence, he doesn’t hesitate to lob foreign policy audibles, as it were, from the Presidential campaign’s line of scrimmage.

It is these unpredictable outbursts of truth and common sense, not his bombast, bad manners and bigotry, that has the Acela Corridor in high dudgeon. The Donald’s establishment bettors are deathly afraid that he might confirm to the unwashed electorate of Flyover America what it already suspects.

Namely, that Washington’s hyper-interventionism and ungodly expensive imperial footprint all around the globe has nothing at all to do with their security and safety, even as it saddles them with massive public debts and the threat of jihadist blowback to the homeland.

For Trump’s part, the fact is that most of his wild pitches — the Mexican Wall, the Muslim ban, waterboarding — are basically excesses of campaign rhetoric that would likely get fashioned into something far more palatable if he were ever in a position to govern. By contrast, the fundamental consensus of our bipartisan rulers is a mortal threat to peace, prosperity and democratic rule.

Worse still, the beltway consensus is so entombed in groupthink that the machinery grinds forward from one folly to the next with hardly a peep of dissent. Nothing could better illustrate that deleterious dynamic, in fact, than the NATO warships currently trolling around the Black Sea.

For crying out loud, the very thought that Washington is sending lethally armed destroyers into the Black Sea is an outrage. That eurasian backwater harbors no threat whatsoever to the security and safety of the citizens of America — or, for that matter, to those of Germany, France, Poland or the rest of NATO, either.

The shrunken remnants of the Russian Navy — home-ported at Sevastopol on the Crimea, as it has been since Catherine The Great — could not uncork the Dardanelles with war-making intent in a thousand years. Not in the face of the vast NATO armada implacably positioned on the Mediterranean side of the outlet.

So what is possibly the point of rattling seaborne missile batteries on Russia’s shoreline? It assumes a military threat that’s non-existent and a hostile intent in Moscow that is purely an artifact of NATO propaganda.

In truth, these reckless Black Sea naval maneuvers amount to a rank provocation. With one glance at the map, even the much maligned high school educated voters who have rallied to Trump’s cause could tell you that much.

The same can be said for the 31,000 NATO troops conducted exercises in Poland and the Baltic republics right alongside the border with Russia. These are not isolated cases of tactical excess or even far-fetched exercises in “deterrence”.

Indeed, these utterly pointless maneuvers on Russia’s doorsteps are just a further extension of the same imperial arrogance that stupidly initiated a fight with Putin’s Russia in the first place by igniting a Ukrainian civil war on the streets of Kiev in February 2014.

Washington not only sponsored and funded the overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutionally elected government, but did so for the most superficial and historically ignorant reason imaginable. To wit, it objected to the decision of Ukraine’s prior government to align itself economically and politically with its historic hegemon in Moscow.

So what?

There was nothing at stake in the Ukraine that matters. During the last 700 years, it has been a meandering set of borders in search of a country. In fact, the intervals in which the Ukraine existed as an independent nation have been few and far between.

Invariably, it rulers, petty potentates and corrupt politicians made deals with or surrendered to every outside power which came along. These included the Lithuanians, Turks, Poles, Austrians, Czars and commissars, among others.

Indeed, in modern times Ukraine functioned as an integral part of Mother Russia, serving as its breadbasket and iron and steel crucible under czars and commissars alike. Crimea itself was actually Russian territory from 1783, when Catherine The Great purchased it from the Turks, until the mid-1950’s, when in a fit of drunken stupor the newly ascendant Khrushchev gifted it to his Ukrainian compatriots.

Given this history, the idea that Ukraine should be actively and aggressively induced to join NATO was just plain nuts. You might wonder what bantam brains actually came up with the scheme, but only until you recall that NATO itself has been a vestigial organ since 1991.

It’s now in the business of self-preservation and concocting missions, not securing the peace of anyone, anywhere on the planet.

The Ukraine intervention has already caused NATO, the IMF and Washington to pony up more than $40 billion of aid, which has gone straight down the proverbial rathole. The part that wasn’t stolen by the thieving oligarchs Washington installed in Kiev has been used to prosecute an horrific civil war which has killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians caught in the cross-fire and destroyed what is left of the Ukrainian economy.

Indeed, it was the neocon meddlers from Washington who crushed Ukraine’s last semblance of civil governance when they enabled ultra-nationalists and crypto-Nazi to gain government positions after the putsch. In one fell swoop that inexcusable stupidity re-opened Ukraine’s blood-soaked modern history.

That includes Stalin’s re-population of the Donbas with “reliable” Russian workers after his genocidal liquidation of the Kulaks in the early 1930s. It also encompasses the large-scale collaboration by Ukrainian nationalists in the west with the Nazi wehrmacht as it laid waste to Poles, Jews, gypsies and other undesirables on its way to Stalingrad.

And then there was the equal and opposite spree of barbaric revenge as the victorious Red Army marched back through Ukraine on its way to Berlin.

What beltway lame brains did not understand that Washington’s triggering of “regime change” in Kiev would re-open this entire bloody history of sectarian and political strife?

Moreover, once they had opened Pandora’s box, why was it so hard to see that an outright partition of Ukraine with autonomy for the Donbas and Crimea, or even accession to the Russian state from which these communities had originated, would have been a perfectly reasonable resolution?

Certainly that would have been far preferable to dragging all of Europe into the lunacy of the current anti-Putin sanctions and embroiling the Ukrainian factions in a suicidal civil war.

After all, the artificial country of Czechoslovakia, created on a political whim at Versailles, was peacefully and inconsequently devolved into its separate Czech and Slovakian nations. The same of true of Yugoslavia.

In that instance, it was American bombers which forced the partition of Kosovo from its Serbian parent. And even then, this Washington sanctioned partition ended up in the hands of a criminal mafia that makes Putin appear sainted, to boot.

In short, the current spat of NATO saber-rattling exercises on Russia’s borders is living proof that Washington is enthrall to a permanent ruling class of educated fools and power-obsessed apparatchiks,

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Imperial City continues to squander scarce fiscal resources on the obsolete machinery of NATO and the bloated cold war military establishments of its members that have no legitimate purpose.

No wonder Trump’s establishment bettors scolded and harrumphed when he had the temerity to suggest that NATO was too expensive and possibly obsolete.

But of course it is!

It’s mission ended 25 years ago when Boris Yeltsin mounted a soviet tank vodka flask in hand and stood done the Red Army. The very geopolitical earth parted right there and then.

Indeed, two years earlier, President Bush 41 and his able Secretary of State, James Baker, had promised Gorbachev that in return for acquiescing in the reunification of Germany that NATO would not be expanded “by a single inch”.

Time and again that promise has been betrayed for no good reason except imperial aggrandizement. Now a military alliance which had no purpose other than to contain 50,000 Soviet tanks on the central front has been joined by the likes of Albania, Croatia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria, too.

Has the ascension of these micro-states added to the security and safety of the citizens of Lincoln NE or Springfield MA?

No it hasn’t. It has actually subtracted from national security by threatening a third rate power with a GDP no larger than that of the New York SMSA and an annual defense budget amounting to less than 30 days of Pentagon spending.

As to the necessity of the current naval maneuvers, even the leaders of Bulgaria—-a nation check-by-jowl to Russia’s Black Sea fleet — have demurred, pointing out the obvious.

To wit, the Black Sea is a place for sailboats and vacationers, not NATO warships.

In fact, that is so obvious that it is no wonder our beltway bettors are frothing at the mouth about Donald Trump. He just might mobilize the country against the threadbare predicates of their ruinous rule.

Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said he would not join a proposed NATO fleet in the Black Sea “because it should be a place for holidays and tourists, not war.”

“I always say that I want the Black Sea to see sailboats, yachts, large boats with tourists and not become an arena of military action … I do not need a war in the Black Sea,” Reuters cited Bulgaria’s Prime Minister as saying at a media briefing. “To send warships as a fleet against Russian ships exceeds the limit of what I can allow,” Borisov told reporters in Sofia on Thursday, as cited by Bloomberg. “To deploy destroyers, aircraft carriers near [the resort cities of] Bourgas or Varna during the tourist season is unacceptable.”

That’s the beginning of good sense. Disbanding NATO would be the next rational step forward.

“It looks like it's pretty much standard operating procedure for preliminary inquiries to interview the subject or pitch the person to become an informant and/or plant an undercover or informant close by to see if the person bites on the suggestion,” Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, told AlterNet. “In the case of Mateen, since he already worked for a security contractor [G4S], he was either too savvy to bite on the pitch or he may have even become indignant that he was targeted in that fashion. These pitches and use of people can backfire.”

During the presidential election cycle, liberals display their gutlessness. Liberal organizations, such as MoveOn.org, become cloyingly subservient to the Democratic Party. Liberal media, epitomized by MSNBC, ruthlessly purge those who challenge the Democratic Party establishment. Liberal pundits, such as Paul Krugman, lambaste critics of the political theater, charging them with enabling the Republican nominee. Liberals chant, in a disregard for the facts, not to be like Ralph Nader, the “spoiler” who gave us George W. Bush.

Given the stakes in the outcome of the American presidential elections, ensuring the integrity of the electoral process is of the utmost importance.

Are the results we are witnessing in the 2016 primary elections trustworthy? While Donald Trump enjoyed a clear and early edge over his Republican rivals, the Democratic contest between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernard Sanders has been far more competitive. At present, Secretary Clinton enjoys an apparent advantage over Sanders. Is this claimed advantage legitimate? We contend that it is not, and suggest an explanation for the advantage: States that are at risk for election fraud in 2016 systematically and overwhelmingly favor Secretary Clinton. We provide converging evidence for this claim.

First, we show that it is possible to detect irregularities in the 2016 Democratic Primaries by comparing the states that have hard paper evidence of all the placed votes to states that do not have this hard paper evidence. Second, we compare the final results in 2016 to the discrepant exit polls. Furthermore, we show that no such irregularities occurred in the 2008 competitive election cycle involving Secretary Clinton against President Obama. As such, we find that in states wherein voting fraud has the highest potential to occur, systematic efforts may have taken place to provide Secretary Clinton with an exaggerated margin of support.

Different outcomes in primary states with paper trails and without paper trails

After applying various statistical models to subsets of 2016 primary voting data several academic researchers conclude Hillary Clinton’s win was only possible through widespread vote fraud.

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Widespread allegations of election fraud and voter suppression across the United States during the 2016 Democratic Primary has sparked the interest of several academic researchers and what they discovered in their research is disturbing.

The researchers each performed independent studies in which a few different statistical was applied to analyze various subsets of vote data and of the studies came to the same conclusion.

Namely that Hillary’s win was could have only been possible a result of widespread election fraud.

In fact, one of the statistical models applied by Stanford University researcher Rodolfo Cortes Barragan to a subset of the data found that the probability of the “huge discrepancies” of which “nearly all are in favor of Hillary Clinton by a huge margin” was “statistically impossible” and that “the probability of this this happening was is 1 in 77 billion”.

Furthermore, the researchers found that the election fraud only occurred in places where the voting machines were hackable and that did not keep an paper trail of the ballots.

In these locations Hillary won by massive margins.

On the other hand, in locations that were not hackable and did keep paper trails of the ballots Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton.

Analysis also showed repeatedly irregularities and statistically impossible reverses in reported live votes in several locations across the country.

In commenting on the research, Barragan stated that some of the models are rock solid and 59 years old and the results seen here have never been witnessed in non-fraudulent election during that time period.

To summarize, at least four different independent studies were conducted with various statistical models applied.

The researchers applied the different statistical models to:

Actual vote counts as they were reported

Discrepancies in polling data verse actual counts.

Various subsets of demographic polling data verse actual vote counts

The results of each study corroborated the with the results of the others and some of the researchers have review the work of the others’ and go onto to confirm the findings in those studies.
It will take months for the studies to undergo peer review.

However, all of their research statistically proved there there must of been widespread fraud to create the discrepancies in the vote counts that exist in all 3 subsets of the data analyzed.
The research of Barragan done collaboratively with Axel Geijsel of Tilburg University in The Netherlands.

That research corroborates independent mathematical research conducted by Richard Charnin.

Further independent research was conducted by Beth Clarkson of Berkeley who also not only corroborated the two previous studies but reviewed them and after her research was done and confirmed their results.

A PDF Summary of the Barragan/Geijsel study “Are we witnessing a dishonest election? A between state comparison based on the used voting procedures of the 2016 Democratic Party Primary for the Presidency of the United States of America” can be found here.

The meat of the study is contained in the Appendix, Supplemental Analyses, and References to Barragan’s Study and in the attachments which follow.

Attachment: Page 1

This report summarizes the results of our review of the GEMS election management system, which counts approximately 25 percent of all votes in the United States. The results of this study demonstrate that a fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly, yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute votes. This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing or canvass procedures, and can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds.

They allow “weighting” of races. Weighting a race removes the principle of “one person-one vote” to allow some votes to be counted as less than one or more than one. Regardless of what the real votes are, candidates can receive a set percentage of votes. Results can be controlled. For example, Candidate A can be assigned 44% of the votes, Candidate B 51%, and Candidate C the rest.

Instead of “1” the vote is allowed to be 1/2, or 1+7/8, or any other value that is not a whole number.

Fractions in results reports are not visible.Votes containing decimals are reported as whole numbers unless specifically instructed to reveal decimals (which is not the default setting). All evidence that fractional values ever existed can be removed instantly even from the underlying database using a setting in the GEMS data tables, in which case even instructing GEMS to show the decimals will fail to reveal they were used.

So the annual Bilderberg meeting placidly came and went behind heavily secured doors (and fence) at the Hotel Taschenbergpalais Kempinski in Dresden – conveniently upstaged by the murky story of a US-born Muslim and registered Democrat, with a steady job in global security firm 4GS and no previous criminal record, suddenly converting into an alleged Daesh-inspired urban jihadi unleashing hell on LGBT targets.

Some of the usual Masters of the Universe – but mostly their selected paperboys – did hit Bilderberg in a jolly Goldman Sachs-meets-Google mix. Feel free to enjoy drawing the possible connections among the official participants, all of them lavishly welcomed by organizer Airbus.

What really matters at Bilderberg is what is discussed only by selected masters and messengers behind closed doors – not those steering committee «sessions» with invited guests (and that includes media reps from "The Economist," "Bloomberg," the "FT" or the "Wall Street Journal"). Bilderberg is like a redux, ultra-selected version of Davos, more akin to the meetings of the Trilateral Commission.

Bilderberg follows an extremely strict «Chatham House Rule»; if you are a participant you may use any information you receive from your fellow gatherers, as long as you don’t reveal your source. That’s pretty much how the Beltway/Wall Street axis operates.

So what do these up to 150 exponents of what Zygmunt Bauman would define as the cream of the crop of (transatlantic) liquid modernity elites – two thirds from Western Europe, the rest from North America – talk about?

Predictably, what finance ministers and mega-corporate CEOs talk about; the preservation of what Immanuel Wallerstein describes as the «world system», as in turbo-financial capitalism; and the necessity to change a few things so nothing substantial changes at all. Think of it as seven-star groupthink.

As my (European diplomat) mole told me, this year some key items in the New World Order (NWO) agenda were imperatively discussed, such as how to block both Donald Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK by all means necessary, as well as how to shove the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) over European public opinion’s throats, also by all means necessary.

But other globalist imperatives were as relevant, such as the creation of a virtual online passport – an Internet ID – without which no one will be able to say, or buy, anything. The excuse for it is to promote «cybersecurity». The idea, not surprisingly, came out of the Orwellian European Commission (EC).

Plutocracy X precariat

It’s been a long and winding road since the inaugural 1954 meeting at the Hotel De Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands.

The Panama Papers psyops revealed that – ailing – King Salman of Saudi Arabia is among a roast of notorious offshore profiteers «in relation» to «associates».

The House of Saud used British Virgin Islands shell companies to take out at least $34 million in mortgages for lavish houses in London and «a luxury yacht the size of a football field». And yet Western corporate media has given it a glaring pass. Quite predictable: House of Saud notables feature heavily among prime Western vassals.

As it stands, a major disconnect is also in effect. The House of Saud is busy spinning the need for austerity at home even as it is now positioned as the world’s third-largest spender on weapons, ahead of Russia.

«Austerity» is a bit rich when I revealed earlier this year that the House of Saud not only unleashed an oil price war – against Russia, Iran and the US shale oil industry – but also was busy unloading at least $1 trillion in US securities on the market to balance its increasingly disastrous budget.

And now we have a major PR offensive in Western corporate media by Warrior Prince Mohammad bin Salman, 30, the lead conductor of the disastrous, illegal and crammed with civilian collateral damage war on Yemen. Young Salman is selling himself as an Arab David Bowie – the Man Who Changed the World, mostly because of his desire to partially privatize Aramco and partially extract Saudi Arabia from its strict role as an oil hacienda by creating a $2 trillion fund.

For the US, UK and France, especially, Saudi Arabia is the proverbial «key ally». It’s not only the – again proverbial – second-largest oil reserves in the world, and the notorious Mob-style 1945 «protection» deal struck between Roosevelt and Ibn Saud. It’s the House of Saud as the key anchor for the petrodollar; and the House of Saud consistently buying over $100 billion in weapons from the West in the past few years.

Yet, in parallel, Saudi Arabia – a mix of theocracy and absolute monarchy, complete with a gaggle of intolerant, fundamentalist imams – keeps perpetuating its role of ideological matrix to all strands of Salafi-Jihadism, including of course its latest incarnation: the phony ISIS/ISIL/Daesh «Caliphate». The House of Saud, directly and indirectly, has lavished over $100 billion all across the lands of Islam – and beyond – to spread its fundamentalist Wahhabi «vision».

A glimpse behind the velvet curtains

For a while there have been incessant rumors, from London to New York, and across the Middle East, of possible coup in Riyadh.

Now a policy-making source with intimate knowledge not only of the House of Saud but its real masters in the Washington/Wall Street axis has offered an unprecedented glimpse into the current, groundbreaking power play in the Kingdom.

According to the source,«Prince Mohammed bin Salman really does realize what is happening. He is being set up. He is surrounded by consultants going over the entire Saudi economic system aiming for its reorganization – which is certainly necessary. And some of these consultants at the same time are organizing the data for the CIA. This would make any transition away from the monarchy – which the CIA loathes – much easier, towards a favored military officer».

And this would also imply that some of Aramco’s Western employees – hired to hold the place together – are your proverbial CIA agents; a classic cover for clandestine ops.

The whole process started a while ago, in April 2014, when there were rumblings in Riyadh about a move to get rid of King Abdullah. Eventually a compromise was struck; Bandar bin Sultan, a.k.a. Bandar Bush – who badly bundled the war in Syria via his sponsorship of an army of Jihadis – was fired as the real culprit in this Saudi-led war of terror. And Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was promoted to number two in the Kingdom – duly under the orders of His Masters’ Voice in Washington. As he was anointed Crown Prince, Nayef was all but enshrined as the next King in the succession of King Salman.

What the publicity-savvy young Salman wants is to turn the tables. He sees himself as his father’s successor. Yet internal resistance is fierce. According to the source, «it does not play well among the poor masses of the Kingdom that he brags about a two-trillion-dollar stock value of Aramco when they are suffering the removal of House of Saud subsidies». As for the Saudi oil wealth, the young Salman deceptively does not believe «the decline in oil prices poses a threat to us, for us it’s a free market that is governed by supply and demand».

Our source is adamant that «Mohammed bin Nayef is very capable and a very effective fighter against terrorism. He is mature, stable, capable and talented. The problem is there is growing discontent in the Kingdom over the oil price war ordered by Washington. Consultants meanwhile are pressing Mohammed bin Salman to cut subsidies. That is certain to disorient the masses towards him. And this gives, then, a justification for any coup whereby the population is neutralized».

Which brings us to the all-important massive weapons purchases angle: «This has to do with the efforts of Mohammed bin Salman to create a strong Saudi army, in combination with military alliances with Pakistan and Egypt, which are paid for allies. Money is being thrown around all over, while subsidies are to be cut. This will only add more pressure on the monarchy».

The military front is not exactly a win for the Salmans, father and son. Sisi in Cairo certainly balks at the notion of having Egyptian troops trapped in a Yemen quagmire. Same with Sharif in Islamabad – who refused to send a Pakistani contingent.

So King Salman was forced to turn towards India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After all there are 3 million Indian workers in Saudi Arabia, and India imports 20% of its oil from Saudi Arabia. Still, no Indian troops.

Both India and Pakistan clearly see, this is all part of Riyadh’s extensive, paranoid anti-Iran campaign. India and Iran are partners in the expansion of the New Silk Roads across Eurasia. And Iran-Pakistan are key partners in Pipelineistan – via the IP gas pipeline.

Time to line up for a cab?

The possibility of a coup in Riyadh further on down the road still remains. It boils down to Exceptionalistan’s control. Saudi Arabia under the Warrior Prince cannot possibly be trusted, according to influential sectors in the Beltway. Turkey is now considered out of control; Sultan Erdogan being snubbed in Washington by Obama could even turn out to be the prelude for his eventual removal by the Turkish military, which are really under Exceptionalistan’s control. Iran cannot be counted on – because for Tehran the priority is Eurasia integration and a closer strategic relationship with both Russia and China.

Arguably the House of Saud could turn things around by raising the oil price to $100 a barrel, via a 10% cutback in production worked out with Russia at the upcoming meeting in Doha; and realign their policies with Russia as a balancing power. Forget it; it’s not bound to happen.

What’s fascinating in this running Saudi "House of Cards" plot is that, according to our source, «King Abdullah was someone that could be argued to be useful to the United States to maintain the stability of oil supply». But influential Beltway players do not regard Salman or his son that way; especially the son is thought of as «erratic and unstable».

Once again: control, control, control. Our source explains how «the West has educated Saudi Arabia’s military officers – who are often Western intel agents. That’s why Crown Prince Sultan never trusted them and purposely kept the military weak when he was Defense Minister. He feared them as the privileged source in a takeover of the country. And he was certainly correct. In the CIA’s eyes, the Saudis need outside supervision. And this is one of the reasons for the CIA’s desire for regime change, as the place is spiraling out of control».

Yet here’s another key disconnect. The CIA believes the House of Saud to be the chief sponsors of global terrorism. But that’s not true. Most of these terror ops are 21st century remixes of Operation Gladio. And that implies the hand of NATO/Pentagon. This disconnect partially explains why the Pentagon and the CIA are at each other’s throats.

It’s still unclear which US intel faction will eventually prevail in Riyadh – and that may further change depending on who will be the tenant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next year.

For the moment, quite a few influential players are fond of imagining an astonishing House of Saudi fortune, including Thousand-and-One nights-style assets of the extended royal family, all frozen overseas, from the US to Panama. With the inevitable corollary of thousands of princes lining up for cab driver jobs in London and New York.

Cirze's World

Cirze's World

Beth and Lily Calmly Monitor Farmers Market Traffic

Cirze's World

Oscar Wilde

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Harold Pinter

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless... while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

Chickenhawks Galore

Peace

"A man of peace is not a pacifist; a man of peace is simply a pool of silence. He pulsates a new kind of energy into the world, he sings a new song. He lives in a totally new way his very way of live is that of grace, that of prayer, that of compassion. Whomsoever he touches, he creates more love-energy. The man of peace is creative. He is not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. He is not against war; he simply understands why war exists. And out of that understanding he becomes peaceful. Only when there are many people who are pools of peace, silence, understanding, will the war disappear."